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Chapter 5: Questions: Exposing Your Way from Ignorance to Innocence

Osho,The first time I met you, I said no to your question as to whether I had a question, and in all these eight years I have never asked any.Now my mind seems to be exploding with questions, out of which it is hard to choose any satisfying to a German perfectionist; yet I feel almost in panic - I don’t want to miss that chance.Osho, why is there that constant fear of missing the train?

There are people who really do not have questions. They have a quest, but not questions. They have a thirst, a deep hunger for being and more being, but no desire for gathering and accumulating knowledge. Hence they don’t have any questions.

They are the best kind of disciples.

There are other people who do not ask questions, but that does not mean that they don’t have questions. They do not ask because asking a question goes against their ego. And if the ego is German, then the problem becomes more difficult.

It is not coincidental that Germany has produced great philosophers, philosophers who are ready to give answers to every question. But Germany has not produced sincere inquirers, seekers, who are thirsty for the answer. It has not created disciples; it creates only masters, and these masters are only great intellectuals, not mystics.

Germany has contributed much as far as knowledge is concerned - Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, Karl Marx - but it has not contributed a single mystic. In the whole of history, not a single Kabir, not a single Nanak, not a single Farid - very strange, but it is not coincidental.

The German ego is ready to give the answer, whether it knows or not; but it is very reluctant to ask the question, whether it has the question or not. The same is your situation. For eight years you have been repressing, perhaps unconsciously, and there is a limit to everything. You can repress only so much, and then a point comes when you are sitting on a volcano. Now your mind is exploding with questions. From where have they come? For eight years they were not there, and suddenly out of nowhere they are almost creating in you a state of insanity - so many questions that you cannot even find which one is worthy to be asked.

You will have to look backwards. Those eight years that you kept them repressed are your responsibility. If you had allowed them to come, in those eight years you might have been completely cleansed of all questions; you might have become a tabula rasa, an innocent child.

But because to ask is to show one’s ignorance, you went on repressing. And there is always a hope: somebody else here may ask it, so why expose yourself?

But remember, each person’s question has a personality of its own. Even though the words may be the same, the language exactly the same, the phrasing of the question not a bit different, but because the questioner is different, it makes such a difference that it is almost unbridgeable. Each person has grown in a different way, has lived a different life, has passed through different ups and downs. You cannot find another person who has gone through the same experiences. Hence, the question may appear to be the same, but it cannot be the same.